The Tale of the Three Sisters
by Rumour of an Alchemist
Summary: A counterpart story to 'The Tale of the Three Brothers' with an 'Arabian Nights' flavour. Rated 'T'. One-shot. Minor text revision, 24th December, 2013.


(minor revision of main text, 24th December, 2013)

Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: The following is set in the Middle-East, during what Wikipedia refers to as 'The Islamic Golden Age', and is perhaps thematically a crossover between the worlds of Harry Potter and of _The Arabian Nights_ (or at least that's what I'm aiming for). To some extent it's 'in-universe mythology', akin to the _Tales of Beedle the Bard_, and which may or may not be compatible with the canon universe, although it's certainly assumed to be part of the mythology extant in the 'Saint Potter' universe. This story is rated 'T'.

Further Note: _jinni_ and _jinniyah_ are used as the masculine and feminine singular forms to the plural _jinn_.

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_The Tale of the Three Sisters_

There were once three sisters who travelled with their family on a pilgrimage from Baghdad to Mecca. Now these sisters were studied in the arcane arts – though they were members of the faithful, so shunned the unnatural practices of trafficking with the dead and divination – and when a sandstorm blew up out of nowhere one evening during their return to Baghdad (resulting in them becoming separated from the rest of their family), they did not panic, but created for themselves a shelter in which to wait out the storm. This shelter they warded well against intrusions by the impious or by any man not of their kinship, and they then settled down for the night. The thought of using their arts to return in the blink of an eye to Baghdad never occurred to their minds – for even in the act of the travel _back_, they considered such to be a violation of the sacred nature of their journey.

The next morning, the sisters rose before the dawn, washed, and made the customary prayers, the sound of the storm outside diminishing into nothingness as they did so, and then they were taken by surprise by the sudden manifestation of the presence amongst them of an otherworldly being. The previous evening, as they were establishing their shelter, a dove had descended through the storm, to land in their midst, and feeling compassion for so weary and storm-tossed a bird, they had permitted it to roost with them, and given it a little water. Now, with the storm over and as the advent of the sun marked the end once more of the hours of darkness, that bird became transfigured into a woman of supernatural aspect.

She thanked the sisters and explained that she was a princess amongst the jinn, and that last night, a cruel male jinni who desired her for his bed had transformed her into a bird, and conjured the same sandstorm that had separated the three sisters from the rest of their party, when the jinniyah declined his advances. He had declared that he would hear and rescind his magic if she pleaded to be his before the night was out, but otherwise she could perish as she chose, then he had thrust her forth into all the cruel fury of the desert storm. It was only with the rising of the sun that his spell had broken, allowing her to regain her normal shape. And in gratitude that they had helped her escape her tormentor, the jinniyah gave each of the sisters a gift, suited to those familiar with the arts arcane. To the first sister, she gave a wand of unsurpassing excellence, made from the wood of a tree of a distant land, that she might be able to better protect her family. To the second sister, she gave a plain looking stone, that would allow her to converse with the very angels themselves, that she might increase in her knowledge and piety in faith. And to the third sister, she gave a cloak woven from starlight, that had the marvellous property of rendering a wearer completely imperceptible to mortal eyes, that she might never be lacking in a means to avoid the improper and lustful gazes of strange men. And then they exchanged words of devotion, praising the Almighty and his prophets, and the jinniyah took her leave of them and the sisters were able to seek out and rejoin their party, who had been able to find shelter from the storm in the hollow of a nearby oasis.

And the three sisters returned to Baghdad and lived out the spans of their natural lives until such times as it was decreed that they should pass on into the hereafter.

Some sages of note account a footnote to this tale. The three gifts that the jinniyah had given the sisters passed after their deaths amongst their relatives, until such a time as they became all gathered in the hands of a cruel and impious man, who turned his back on the true faith, and became a murderer-for-hire – an assassin who killed men and women, for mere coin. He abused the wand, the stone, and the cloak, to pursue his evil ends, seeing himself above the judgement even of God, and boasting that he was 'the master of death' who would forever escape that which he brought to others. But with the turning of the years, fate decreed an end to his wickedness; during a time when the faithful were at war with armies from the western lands, a man-at-arms of the west (who was pious by the standards of those _not_ truly of the faithful), standing sentry duty one evening at a ford on the edge of a camp, observed the passage of the so called 'master of death' crossing the river – the other, busy in thought with his latest evil plots and wrapped in the marvellous cloak deemed himself impossible to detect, but the splash of his boots in the water and the clatter and shift of the stones that he trod upon gave him away. And the man-at-arms, fearing that some fell spirit out of the desert was walking abroad, raised his crossbow and let fly at where he took the unseen spirit to be, and fate guided his hand so that the bolt took the 'master of death' in an eye and slew him in the instant, putting an end to his deeds. And the name of this man of the west who slew the 'master of death' is held to have been 'Peril'.

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Author Notes:

If the 'deathly hallows' of the Harry Potter universe are assumed to be items significant in their abilities/powers being practically without rival, then it seems to me that they (or at least rumours of them) logically _ought_ to have come into contact with and figured in the cultures of lands other than those of western Europe. 'The Tale of the Three Sisters' puts the deathly hallows in the Middle-East for a time (and perhaps provides an origin story for them predating the western European one of the Peverell brothers, though elements of it _might_ have become incorporated into the story of The Three Brothers).

Note that if the deathly hallows _did_ originate or even pass through the Middle-East in the matter described in this story, then at least in the intention and manner of its use the 'resurrection stone' has deviated from the original reason for its giving over the centuries. It was gifted to the second sister to permit her to speak with angels - _not_ to be used to call up the spirits of the dead. It may have been that it always had the ability to be 'abused' in this manner or it may have been that somewhere along the line a witch or wizard 'modified' it to do so (possibly the 'master of death', so he could interrogate his dead victims).


End file.
